


Still

by AlexMeg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Draco Malfoy is a Good Boyfriend, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Holding Hands, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Smitten Harry Potter, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:47:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23161939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexMeg/pseuds/AlexMeg
Summary: Dating Draco Malfoy, Harry thinks, will mean being at arms length outside of sex. No unnecessary physical contact or displays of affection. He wants him anyway, inexplicably. Perhaps that is exactly the kind of person he should be with, someone who will never need Harry to kiss him first, because Harry doesn't think he'll ever be that person.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 64
Kudos: 1705





	Still

Harry's first love was Ginny Weasley. Beautiful, funny, caring and fierce Ginny Weasley.

There had been Cho before her. They'd kissed, and it'd been... well, it'd mostly been nerve-wracking, wet and very uncomfortable.

He and Ginny kissed for the first time on the Quidditch pitch, in front of thousands of people, the two of them high on the rush of victory. It was nice, wonderful, but it was still new and foreign, having another pair of lips on his. It was still new and foreign to have anything of anyone on him, for the most part. 

There was Sirius, who had held him tight and taken his face in his hands and put his arm around his shoulders without any thought. Harry thinks about it sometimes and wonders how much more he could have had of that if Sirius were alive, or if he had just gotten to spend more time with him. He thinks of his father and wonders if he would have been like that too.

There's Molly, who's always hugging him whenever he comes over, casually brushing a hand over his hair, touching his shoulder and back, kissing his head, and he thinks she does it more often to him because he's the only one that doesn't recoil away from her or roll his eyes, the only one that's still not really too used to it. Even after Fred, even in her grief, she has loved him the same. He hadn't known what mothers were like until her, and sometimes he tries to put his mum's face to these moments and imagine her doing the same too.

Ron and Hermione haven't always been much for casual displays of affection, not until this year at least, besides the occasional hugs after vacations or on reconciliation after life-or-death situations, or Hermione occasionally laying her head on his shoulder when she's sad or worried, or Ron's hand patting his back and shoulder. This year, however, something has seemingly changed. They do all the same things, but they do it more often. Perhaps it was the war, or perhaps it was his false death, or perhaps it was something else entirely.

Ginny, though, is still the kind of person that likes her personal space, which made a lot of sense when she explained what it was like living in a house of nine people. She had loved him and he knows this, but physical affection never came too naturally to her, especially not in public, and who was Harry to complain when he'd never even kissed her first?

Not to say she wasn't loving enough when they were together. She was. She just expressed love through other means, like through words, through gifts that reminded her of him, through comfort and reassurance and support, through yelling at the lunatics at school that tried to slip him love potions (she still does this), and sometimes, she held his hand and put her auburn hair to his shoulder and kissed him in front of all their friends.

Things like these, with time, became easy and comfortable with her. She became one of the few people in his life that he'd grown used to the touch of. He isn't sure if she had ever noticed that he never initiated any of it, how he stilled under her hands in the beginning of their relationship, but he also knows she believes most boys don't like that sort of thing as much as they like sex.

Harry likes sex, and he'd gotten good at it with her too. He knew what she liked, where she liked his hands best and how she liked his mouth on her, but he thinks part of it had always been to get to all the other things, like clinging to her body and feeling her all over him, like sliding his hands up her arms and taking her hands in his own, like the feel of her hands in his hair encouraging him to keep going when he went down on her. 

The first few months of Eighth Year, following their break-up, is a bit of a haze of sex and alcohol with Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff boys and girls. Sex is fine with strangers, if it is rough and quick and impersonal. He knows what's expected, and he knows how to give it. Outside of this, it's uncertain and unpredictable.

He likes their hands and body on him through the high and the heat, but he never wants them to hold him after and he never wants to hold them either. That's something he'd only wanted with Ginny, when she felt like it and she lined herself up against his body.

Romance hasn't seemed to be in the cards for him anytime soon after Ginny. He gets what he needs during sex, anyway. It's not really enough, but it fills the hollow inside of him somewhat, this odd hunger roiling beneath his skin that he doesn't know if he'll ever get rid of. He's good at going after what he wants and taking it, knows how to demand and hold his ground until they're given to him, but the things he has to ask for, he has never known how to just ask for them.

Harry spent over a year loving Ginny and he never learned how to just reach his hand out and take hers in his own, or pull her back against his chest with an arm around her, or kiss her first.

And then comes along Draco Malfoy.

Looking at Draco Malfoy, one will never assume he's much for such sentimental displays. Harry certainly didn't. There is nothing tender about him, after all, what with how he generally seems cold and callous and unapproachable in his resting state, all smirks and snark and snide remarks. Anyone putting unwanted hands on his prim and pristine self are met with an icy glare, a cocked and haughty eyebrow, until they retreat from him.

There's the occasional time one might see his ease and comfort with his mother, and sometimes even Blaise Zabini, and especially Pansy Parkinson, the way he'll drop his head into her lap without a thought and let her stroke his hair, but that's about it.

Dating Draco Malfoy, Harry thinks, will mean being at arms length outside of sex. No unnecessary physical contact or displays of affection. He wants him anyway, inexplicably. Perhaps that is exactly the kind of person he should be with, someone who will never need Harry to kiss him first, because Harry doesn't think he'll ever be that person.

He can't say when it started, these feelings he'd developed for a boy he'd hardly liked two years ago, only that it had started sometime in Eighth Year, after their enmity had died down to something civil, after the change in Draco's behavior towards him and his friends, still all smirks and snark and snide remarks, yes, but he'd also apologized with thorough sincerity to all those he'd wronged—some forgave and some didn't, and that was fair. Harry took it as a testament to his newfound maturity that he accepted their reactions graciously and moved on.

He tips his head at Harry whenever he passes by him in the hallways, a small smirk at one corner of his lips that has an entirely different undertone to it nowadays, one that leaves Harry nowhere near irritated and very much near something that makes his heart skip a beat. 

He makes polite small talk with Hermione regarding homework, and with Luna on her nargles and her other weirdly named creatures, and he banters with Ron in a way that's amusing rather than angering.

He smirks at Harry, and smiles at him, and jokes with him. He leans his grinning face into his own to see him laugh at them, and he always squeezes in beside him on the occasions they gather together with all their friends. Perhaps, at some point, they have all become somewhat friendly with one another; Pansy and Hermione, Blaise and Ron, Harry and Draco.

One day, it stops being little more than an odd schoolboy crush, and it becomes something that keeps Harry's eyes locked on Draco whenever he passes, makes him stop with a quiet smile and pivot around on the balls of his feet to gaze after him, watching him as he walks down towards the end of the corridor, gesturing and talking with Pansy and Blaise. 

It's something that makes him grin broadly just upon the sight of him, makes his heart and the blood in his veins sing when he sees him moving towards him to talk to him, pale eyebrows bouncing as he comes to a stop in front of him.

It's something that has Harry thinking that he may be the most beautiful boy he's ever seen.

"Shut _up_ ," Ginny exclaims. Harry finally tears his gaze away from where Draco disappeared around the corner and looks at her. " _Draco Malfoy_?"

"What?"

"You didn't take your eyes off of him the whole time until he disappeared down the corner."

"Oh," Harry says. Well, this is awkward. "Er."

Ginny smiles, then, and Harry relaxes considerably. "It's alright, Harry." She continues walking down the hall, prompting Harry to break out of their sudden halt as well. Her auburn hair is flying back in the winds coming into the open corridors. "I mean, it's unexpected. _Very_ unexpected. But he's okay now, isn't he? Even Ron's okay with him now, and that's... something." She tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, and then looks at him. "I wasn't going to bring it up with you for the same reason you didn't, but I guess it's not a problem now. There's someone that I like."

"Really? That's great." Harry smiles. "Who?"

"Luna," Ginny says, with a small, fond smile that she directs down at the ground. "I think she might like me too, but… you know. She's _Luna._ It's hard to tell with her, isn't it? She can be rather cryptic."

"Or rather straightforward," Harry adds.

"Or rather straightforward," Ginny agrees. "I just wish she was a little more straightforward about this."

She reaches into her collar, pulling out an unsightly necklace made of very large, irregular objects repeating on a string.

"She gave me this today," Ginny says with a soft grin. "She made it herself, from the bones of some creature that I don't even remember the name of. It's ghastly, isn't it? But cute."

That necklace is the furthest thing from cute, if Harry's being truthful. "I think you just find _her_ cute, mostly."

Ginny eyes the necklace closely, making a funny face, and then nods with a scrunch of her nose and shrugs. "Yeah. I think I just find _her_ cute, mostly." Harry laughs, and Ginny grins at him, and it's good. Seeing her like this, being okay with her, being lighter. Ginny Weasley was his first love, and he will never forget her. She is beautiful, funny, caring and fierce, but she deserves someone like Luna Lovegood, someone who will know how to love her the way she should be.

  
  
  
  
  
  


…

  
  
  
  
  


On a Saturday, sitting on a bench in Hogsmeade after Harry and Draco had both copped out of a snowball fight between them and their friends, Harry thinks a little too much about taking his cheeks, pink against the white frost of the world around them, in his hands and kissing him.

But he doesn't. That might have been terribly out of line anyway. Instead, Harry says, "Go out with me."

Draco blinks his bright grey eyes, bemused. His forehead furrows slightly. "Go out with you, Potter? As in…"

"As in a date."

Draco's mouth falls into an 'o', his pale eyebrows twitching upward. His face does something odd, a multitude of emotions that Harry can't quite read well. He thinks Draco might say no. He wonders if he's been reading it all wrong.

Perhaps their history can only be left behind, never erased, and it will only be strange now for them to be more anything more than somewhat friends.

"That's alright. It was worth a try," Harry says. He smiles ruefully. His chest feels uneasy even as he does, thornful and aching. He breaks his gaze away from him, then, suddenly feeling strange about the way he looked at him too long when Draco wasn't looking back, and instead watches the scene taking place ahead of them.

Ron's grabbing Hermione from around the waist and spinning her in a half-circle, rapid-firing kisses into her cheek as she laughs, and then reaches up over her head and dumps a handful of snow over his red beanie hat, grinning, kissing him. Pansy seems to be mock-exaggerating a cooing sound to Blaise, but it seems all in good fun. She balls up snow from the ground in her gloved hand and smears it over Blaise's face, then, apparently turning on her own teammate.

"I'll go out with you, Potter." Draco nods. He clears his throat. The corners of his lips are twitching, but he seems to be trying to keep his face straight. "Well. On the condition that you take me somewhere fancy and expensive, of course."

"Spoiled rich prat," Harry says, can't hide the breath of a grin playing at his lips.

Draco sniffs, haughtily. "Take it or leave it."

"I'll definitely take it."

The date is wonderful.

Draco is as funny and charming as expected, all smirks and snark and amusing remarks until they walk to the door of his common room, and then he's quiet, something mellow and hopeful on his face, like he's waiting for Harry to do something in the silence they're standing in.

Harry doesn't really know what he's supposed to do, though, so he just stares at Draco and then smiles at him, but it comes out a little nervous and awkward, maybe. Draco presses his lips together, exasperated as he rolls his eyes slightly. He steps forward, lifts his spidery-thin and pale hands out of his black winter-coat pockets and takes Harry's face in his hands like Harry had wanted to do to him yesterday on the bench.

Harry stills. He is so still that he's hardly breathing and maybe Draco notices, as he's leaning his face in towards his own, and he pauses. "May I kiss you?"

Harry only just manages to nod, a mild jerk of his head, and he can't speak. His shoulders are rigid and he's so still that the kiss is chaste and quick and he's glad because he thinks it might be awkward if it goes on any longer.

It's only the day after their third date, when they know that it seems to be going well, that they tell all their friends.

Draco wraps his arm around his waist and Harry goes still, and Draco doesn't notice. Whenever they sit amongst their friends in the common room, Draco sits against him, half of his back against his chest and a hand on Harry's thigh, and Harry goes still and Draco doesn't notice. When he runs up and falls into step with Harry as they're walking to class, he slides his lithe fingers into the spaces between his own as he starts on his rant about whatever, and Harry goes still, as still as he can while walking, and Draco doesn't notice. He doesn't notice for quite a time and Harry is very much okay with that.

Until he does.

They sleep together for the first time, and Harry clings to him with all of himself. He kisses and touches and mouths at his body as much as he wants to because it's all high and heat and he knows what to do here, how to make it good. He wonders if Draco can feel it now, how starved he is for him, for the way his nimble hands slide up into his hair, the arm clinging back to him around his shoulders under his underarms, the way his body feels against the flesh of his arms, the heat and softness of him, and the way his torso jounces rapidly against his own, his short, hitched breaths and gasps muffled into the hollow of Harry's neck.

It's intense, a little fast and hard, and it's brilliant.

And Draco Malfoy is the most beautiful boy that he's ever seen.

He wants to hold Harry after. Harry doesn't hold people or like being held much in the aftermath, but he does want to hold Draco, quite desperately in fact. It throbs beneath his skin and sternum, how much he does.

It's just that when Draco scoots in close against his back, Harry tenses up all over his bare and warm torso, and Draco can't have not noticed this.

Draco snorts a laugh. He has a beautiful laugh, when it's not cold or mocking, when it's warm and open and genuine. "Why so tense, Harry? Do cuddles frighten the big strong Saviour of the Wizarding World? Have we finally found something even worse than You-Know-Who to you?"

 _Can't quite Avada Kedavra a cuddle, you see,_ he thinks of saying in some stupid attempt to laugh it off. He doesn't. He stays still and quiet instead and hopes Draco will just stay right here.

Draco shifts behind him, away from his back and onto a shoulder, looking down at him. "Are you alright?" He sounds bemused.

"Yes," Harry says. He clears his throat. "Yes, I'm alright."

Draco doesn't come back to meld his body into his. "Do you not… Ah, whatever." He scoots away from him on the bed. "Some people aren't into that sort of thing, I suppose."

Harry can't quite explain the aching roil in his chest. He's painfully aware of Draco behind him, so close, and yet so far.

Draco hauls him aside into an empty corridor and against the wall and kisses down his face and jaw and neck. He wraps his arms around his neck, bounces his eyebrows and asks with a grin, _miss me?_ But then he steps away from him, inexplicably, and Harry wonders if he's noticed the strain in his smile and the stiffness of his response, _yeah, loads, for all of one hour._

Draco holds his hand, and when he releases it to push a hand through his own hair, continuing on to gesture in the midst of telling his story, he doesn't return it to hold his again the way he usually does.

He sits against Harry's chest, and then draws away seconds after to shift himself back against the couch.

Draco still comes looking for him after classes and smiles at him and talks to him just the same. He walks with him back to either the Slytherin Common Rooms in the dungeons or walks him back to the Gryffindor Towers. He laughs at his jokes and makes him laugh, too, with amusing or peculiar anecdotes and witty remarks. Nothing else has changed besides that Draco just doesn't touch him all that much anymore, and Harry is vividly aware of this.

Harry catches Draco eying him as Hermione leans her head against his shoulder by the force of her laughter and Harry pulls her close by an arm around her shoulder, grinning broadly, not going still. He catches eyes with Draco when Ron pats Harry's back or his shoulder, not going still. He notices Draco go quiet and distant when Ginny kisses his head playfully and he doesn't go still. 

Draco stops touching him entirely, then.

Ron and Hermione hold hands when they sit in front of the fireplace on the couch, her bushy-haired head in a book, Ron dozing off next to her, or playing chess with Harry. Luna curls up against Ginny as she murmurs to her about the articles planned by her father for the Quibbler, or her new discoveries and the creatures she wants to find, and Ginny tugs her girlfriend up against walls in the corridors sometimes and kisses her. Seamus and Dean peck each other on the lips every so often and pull one another against themselves with a comfort and ease that's as natural as breathing.

And Harry always looks to Draco, or thinks of him. He thinks of touching him all the time. He thinks of holding his hand, or letting Draco curl up against him, or sidling up himself against him, thinks of pulling him up against walls or against himself and kissing him first, but he doesn't know how to ask. He never has. He's stuck in his own skin that doesn't always know how to feel against somebody else's, his hands that grow too heavy when they lift to reach for another's, his body that can't seem to calm down under the weight of another body.

"We need to talk. Alone," Draco says, solemn and ominous, his purposeful stride coming to a stop right in front of Harry. Ron and Hermione glance up at them in bemusement, curled up together on the couch of the Gryffindor commons. He reaches for Harry's arm, stops, and then lets his hand fall. "Just. Come with me, will you?"

Ron's blue eyes narrow at him in some kind of silent warning. "Remember what we talked about, Malfoy?"

Harry frowns at those cryptic words, and even more so at the reversion to surnames. He makes a point to ask him later.

Draco rolls his eyes, but he doesn't say anything before he whips around and starts to walk, robes sweeping around at his ankles. 

He follows Draco over into the empty boys' dormitory, heart pounding wildly in his chest. Draco closes the door with a click when Harry enters after him, turns around and crosses his arms over his chest.

"Tell me, Harry. What are we, really?"

"What?"

"What are we, really?" Draco repeats, a bit slower, arching an eyebrow. "It seems there's been a misunderstanding here. I was under the impression that we were involved in an actual relationship, but clearly we aren't on the same page. So what are we really? Fuck buddies? Friends with benefits? Am I just one more of your many sex-escapades this year? Didn't think I was easy enough, so you had to buy me over with dinners and dates?"

"What the bloody hell are you on about?"

"You don't like me touching you. Do you even like _me_?" Harry blinks, startled. His brows furrow together, his eyes wide.

"Draco…"

"Need I remind you, _Potter,_ you were the one that asked me out. I assumed you were well aware of my history, of who I was, of how people may feel about seeing us together, and you still made that decision despite it. If you'd only realized that you were embarrassed to be seen with me _after—_ "

Harry shakes his head. "I'm not embarrassed to be with you, for Merlin's sake! I don't bloody care what people think about us."

"Well, then what's _your problem_?"

For a long moment, Harry can't get his voice out of his throat, Draco's smoke-grey gaze burning into him.

"It's not that…" It comes out too quiet and raspy. He clears his throat, forcing his voice to be stronger. "I don't _not_ want you to touch me. I just… don't always feel comfortable when people do."

"I'm not people, Potter, I'm your boyfriend. And you're just fine with Weasley and Granger."

"They're Ron and Hermione," is all Harry can say.

"Your best friends. Alright. Fine." Draco exhales a slow, heavy breath through his nose, his lips pursed, his jaw set tight. "Explain to me why you're okay with your ex-Weaslette touching you but not me."

Harry sighs, exasperated. "Her name's Ginny, Draco. And it's not like that. It's just that I'm used to it with her. With all of them."

Draco stares at him, silent and impassive. 

Harry glances down at his hands. "They were the first."

"They were the first _what_?"

"They were the first people to ever touch me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like in a good way."

Draco lifts an eyebrow. "Pardon? What does that mean?" He blinks, confusion furrowing his forehead and scrunching his nose. "Are you telling me that for eleven years, nobody…?"

Harry shifts his weight on his feet, uncomfortable.

"Well. There was Mrs. Figg, sometimes. But I didn't particularly like it with her. She smelled awful."

Draco stares at him for a long moment. He shakes his head. "I don't understand. You—you lived with your relatives, did you not? Your mother's sister?"

"Yeah." Harry clears his throat. "The closest they could stand getting to me was to whack me with a frying pan, or to grab me by the collar. Or sit on me, in my cousin's case."

Draco doesn't say anything. Harry doesn't look up at him.

"They, er... they've never really liked... they didn't like magic and they didn't like me. So they didn't like touching me." Harry snorts a small laugh, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "I, er. I tried to hug my aunt when I was six, and she pushed me away and called me dirty. I thought she meant that I didn't bathe enough."

It was also the time he started becoming more aware of the way they looked at him.

There's so much silence. Harry glances up, finally, meeting his moonstone eyes. Draco's still staring at him, but now he looks lost and angry, a line between his brows, his jaw clenched.

"It's okay," Harry says, not liking how upset Draco seemed. "I don't really care anymore. I mean, I stopped caring ages ago, really."

"That doesn't make it okay." Draco's frown deepens. "Harry, you were a _child_."

Harry lowers down to sit at the foot of his bed, clasping his hands between his lap. He shifts, looking down at his shoes.

"Do you think I wasn't like this with them too at the start? With everyone else?" Harry hasn't quite ever talked about this with anyone. He's never really wanted to, in all honesty. His palms are growing sweaty. "Even now, I still can't ever bring myself to initiate it with anybody."

"I didn't know," Draco says, quietly.

" I didn't tell you."

"You could have told me," Draco says, a rueful frown on his face. " _before_ all of this had happened."

"I don't really talk about this with anyone."

"You talked about it with me."

"I didn't want to lose you."

Draco comes forward and sits beside him slowly, his shoulder brushing against Harry's. Harry forces himself to relax against him.

"I just... don't know how to respond most of the time. It doesn't mean that I don't like it. I just can't— I think I might still feel like people don't want to touch me. Which is...stupid, isn't it?" Harry huffs wryly. "Imagine destroying bloody _Voldemort_ and still being too afraid of somebody pulling away from you."

Draco draws back, a short scowl crossing his face before his face goes flat. "You do know it doesn't work like that."

Harry shrugs, looking down at his hands again when he doesn't know where else to look. He can't bring himself to look Draco in the face right now.

"I, er… I do like it when you do those things. I think about it all the time. Touching you. Being the first to, I mean. Just holding your hand in class or—It drives me mad sometimes, how much I—" He stops there, trailing off. He shifts his jaw, setting it tight.

It seems a little too vulnerable and raw to talk about, the way he was starved for it, and for him.

Draco leans close to him, trying to get him to look at him. "I won't ever stop you."

Harry smiles, a little strained, letting him meet his gaze. "I know. But in my mind, you always pull away from me when I try to. I don't know how to get past that."

Draco takes his face in his hands, thumb stroking under his eyes, and kisses him. Harry closes his eyes, going still, hardly breathing. Draco notices, and he stays right here, putting his forehead to his.

"May I hold you?" Draco asks, after a long moment of only breathing together in the silence.

"You don't have to ask." Harry laughs. He sounds so formal. It's endearing, sweet even. "You just have to let me get used to it."

Draco takes him in against him, one hand on the nape of his neck and the other going around his shoulders carefully. Something has become a little eased and light between them now, enough to let Harry touch his waist tentatively.

Just as he is about to melt into him, finally, Draco withdraws. Harry feels the odd, inexplicable pang of the loss of his solidity and heat.

But Draco waves a beckoning hand over at him, then, scooting backwards on the mattress. "Lie down on the bed."

Harry cocks an eyebrow, puzzled. "It's ten in the morning."

"Not to sleep, you dolt. Just lie down, will you?" Draco leans back on his arms, fixating him with an expectant expression.

Harry knits his brows, but complies with his demand. He moves over to lie down next to him and waits for him to do whatever it is that he wants to do.

By the next second, Draco is rolling over and onto him, one leg thrown on the other side of his waist, and he's pulling at and unbuttoning his shirt.

"Er." Harry shakes his head. Draco's body, heavy and warm and around him, black trouser-clad legs locked against his sides, feels nice, really nice, but it's not quite in the way Draco might be hoping for. "I'm not… I mean, this is nice, but I'm not particularly in the mood right now…?"

"Excellent," Draco says. Harry's shirt is fully opened from the front, and he's tugging it off of his arms. "Neither am I."

"Why are we undressing?" Harry asks, watching as Draco straightens his own collar and tugs at the knot in his tie, not answering his question.

With both their shirts off, Draco places his hands on either side of Harry's head, snow-blond hair hanging around his face and into his silver eyes, hovering over him. "Tell me what you want."

Harry blinks. "What I want?"

Draco puts his nimble hands in his hair, winding his fingers around his curls. He kisses him on the mouth softly, and then straightens, fingertips slipping down to rest on his chest. "Whatever you want."

Harry doesn't move. He can't. He rovers his eyes over him, all pale and wonderful and his. His breaths feel light, shallow through his nose.

Draco picks his hands up from his abdomen and puts them to where his waist dips in just so.

"I…" Harry's voice has gone hoarse, his focus narrowing down to the heat of Draco's skin against his hands,the way he fits against his fingers, the grip of his legs around him. He's touched him everywhere he could ever, but there is something different about this, here and now. He wants too much, but he has never known how to ask, and nobody has ever asked him like this. Nobody has ever touched him the way Draco does, freely, openly, without limit or restraint.

He tugs at his waist, down towards himself, blind need and half-thought out, but Draco follows his cue, shifting around on his knees until he can drape himself over Harry's torso, stomach to stomach, chest to chest, shoulders to shoulders. His nose presses into the side of Harry's neck, arms worming in through Harry's underarms and under his shoulders and around them. 

Harry runs one hand across the gentle rise and fall of his back, tentative, until they're around his waist, clutching at him. It takes time before his body relaxes under him, until his muscles stop quivering, but when it does, it's incredible and warm. Draco's torso is rising and falling against his rapidly racing heart, his breaths a clear, steady current in his ears and against his skin, something calmed and contented under his skin and flesh. He closes his eyes and breathes him in, shallow and shuddering and unsteady.

Harry stays still and quiet, but it's in an entirely different way this time.

  
  
  
  


…

  
  
  
  


In the months that follow, it becomes a fairly common thing to do in the mornings, at nights on the occasions Harry sneaks into Draco's bed after everyone in the Slytherin Commons is asleep. Harry never has to ask because Draco always offers first, always gives him everything that Harry hasn't been able to ask for.

He begins to ease under Draco's hands and his body, even if he still can't bring his hands to lift and reach for his, or kiss him first. It's fine, maybe, at least for now, because Draco continues to hold his hand and sidle up against him and kiss him first. He puts his head in Harry's lap, or draws Harry's head onto his own and gives him head massages or brushes his heavenly fingers through his hair, his nails scratching against his scalp. He holds him after sex and sometimes takes Harry's arm and puts it around him himself.

And he stays. He always stays.

One day, Harry gathers up all the courage he's mustered over weeks, of quietly reaching for Draco's hand and then always withdrawing it at the last second, and just finally, finally takes it.

Sitting in the library on a study date together, Harry pushes his fingers between Draco's and entwines them together, his eyes flicking over to him, but not completely resting on him. He sees just enough to catch Draco's lips quirking into a small, mellow smirk, the subtle inclination of his head towards him. Draco curls his hand around his and he doesn't let go all throughout, even when it grows sweaty and hot and uncomfortable.

On another day, Harry finally gains the courage to do something else that he's been thinking about doing for ages.

The last of the distance on their walk back to the Gryffindor Commons takes place in silence, Draco's hand tangled with Harry's.

Coming to a stop outside the portrait of the Fat Lady, Draco releases his hand, sliding it down his palm, catching on his fingers before letting go, and says, "Good night, Harry." And then he leans in and kisses his cheek, and Harry is left brimming with a familiar, aching longing.

"Night, Draco."

And then Draco turns around, and Harry says, "Draco."

Draco stops, turning his torso around to look at him with an inquisitive raise of his brows, hands in the pockets of his long coat.

Harry almost thinks he won't be able to ask. He's never asked before.

"Will you, er—" he manages. His heart is pounding really fast. "Do you... do you want to do that again tonight?"

Draco stares at him. "Right now?"

Harry shrugs, distracting himself with the scuff of his shoe against the ground, his hands in his trouser pockets.

"Your housemates are probably awake," Draco points out, and he's right. They did call it an early night tonight.

"Right." Harry shakes his head. "I didn't think of that." He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. He can't explain the irrational, roiling ache in his chest again, not too dissimilar to the one he'd felt seeing the Dursleys recoil away from him a very long time ago. "I guess I'll be going then—"

Draco's hand is lurching out, then, grabbing ahold of his. "I didn't say we couldn't," he said softly.

"You weren't wrong," Harry says in a small laugh. "They'll... well, you know how they can be."

"Not like it's a secret, the two of us." Draco nods at the portrait of the sleeping Fat Lady. "Will she allow me in?"

Harry smiles, a small breath of it. Draco's hand is warm and soft, more comfortable and fitting in his own these days. "Yeah. Yeah, she'll allow anyone in when she's asleep, as long as you say the right password."

Draco's head recoils, nose scrunched. "You really could use someone better for security." He pauses. "Then again, they're using portraits for safeguarding, so what do you expect?"

Once inside the Gryffindor Commons, after saying the password, _Venomous Tentacula_ , they make their way through the empty lounge and up to the boy's dorm, where most are awake besides Neville and Ron. They fixate on Draco walking hand-in-hand beside Harry, leaning close together and murmuring amongst themselves.

Harry draws out two pairs of pyjamas out of his trunk, one for himself and the other for Draco.

"Looks like you're in for a fun night, eh, Harry?" Seamus says when Draco's gone off to the loo, grinning, throwing a glance at Dean, who waggles his eyebrows. "Don't forget to put up the spells. We've heard the rumours about you two."

The dormitory erupts into uproar, a chorus of howling wolf whistles and catcalls and guffaws of laughter when Draco crawls inside onto Harry's bed, all dignified and straight-backed until he turns around on his knees and flips them all off with both hands, a thin, satirical smile on his lips, and then jerks the curtains closed to Seamus and Dean's laughing faces. He casts _Silencio_ and _Muffliatio_ around them.

"Rowdy _animals_ ," Draco mutters in disgust, climbing over towards Harry. "The things I put up with for you, Potter."

Harry grins, shifting around on the bed. "My brave, wonderful and darling boyfriend."

"Flattering me?" Draco's tugging his own shirt up over his head.

"Maybe."

A moment after, Draco's bare and warm torso is all over his own, his mouth resting on his shoulder. His chest is a cadenced rise and fall against his own, limbs wrapped around him through his underarms. Harry breathes the skin of the hollow of his neck in, the scent of him and his cologne settling something raw and hungry in him. He folds his arms around him and holds him close, and wonders like always if Draco can feel his heart fluttering rapidly through his sternum.

Sometime later, Harry tilts Draco's head back by a hand on the back of his hair and puts his lips to his, kissing him first for the first time. He sees Draco's eyes close to it through the half-lidded droop of his own gaze, on the verge of slumber, and there is the smallest quirk of a smile at his lips when Harry draws his head back to look at him, his snowy-blond hair tousled, his face beautiful and blissed out and mellowed with covert joy. Draco lays his head down to his shoulder again, hiding a smile that's growing broader against his skin.

  
  
  
  


…

"Potions test is day after tomorrow, isn't it?" Harry asks with a frown, watching as Draco draws his Eighth Year Potions book out of his satchel, and then leans back against the Slytherin-green settee.

Draco cocks an eyebrow. "It's _tomorrow._ "

"Oh," Harry says, and then looks chagrined.

"Yes, _oh,_ " Draco mocks. "And you didn't bring your satchel either, did you?"

"Well. I didn't think we were going to be _studying_."

Draco heaves a put-upon sigh. "You may share my textbook," he says, opening his book and flipping to _Polyjuice Potions_. "I have done half of the chapter. How much did you do?"

Harry grimaces, scratching the back of his head. "I haven't really started."

Draco pins him with a disappointed look, and then stretches his arm out to show him the book, shifting closer to him. "I'll revise the first half with you, then. I'll explain it to you and then we'll continue from where I left off."

Harry nods, settling back against the arm of the couch.

"We'll begin with the ingredients. That is, fluxweed, knotgrass, lacewing flies..."

Harry is a little too distracted by the profile of him, his book held up in his hands, leaning against Harry to let him see, and how close he is, and how much closer he could be. 

He can, maybe. Maybe he can just reach out a hand, curl it around his bicep and tug at him and pull him in, and Draco will follow his cue, will give him what he's asking for. Harry knows he will, knows he'll never stop him. Some day he'll learn to reach out and take his hand first, and pull him against himself with an arm around him, and kiss him first, all without a thought, with an ease and comfort that's as natural as breathing, but maybe it starts here, now, learning to. It's all he wants to do, all he wants to learn in that moment.

Harry takes a breath, his heart pounding fast, his hands growing heavy, but he lifts them anyway. He reaches out a hand and curls it around Draco's bicep. Draco's head raises up from the book to look at him, his voice fading away. Harry tugs at him, Draco follows his hesitant maneuvering, scooting closer, shifting around to lay back against him when Harry pulls him in against himself and folds his arms around him.

"We can both see better like this," Harry murmurs. Draco's back melds easily into his torso, his body sprawled out across the settee between Harry's legs, knees folded up where he's propped his book against them. "And it's more comfortable."  
  


"Hm," Draco says noncommittally, a little too much so. There's a twitch in his cheek, but Harry can't tell if he's only imagined it. He shifts around to get comfortable on him, drops a blind kiss that lands on Harry's neck and then turns back to the book, continuing on with his explanation of the procedure for the formation of Polyjuice Potion.

Draco's body is soft under his clothes, his belly swelling and sinking against his arm. There's a faint scent of his cologne, mingling with the smell of his hair, something herbal and sweet.

"Are you even listening to me?"

Harry startles at the snapping fingers, head jerking back. "What. Yeah. I am."

"What did I say then?"

His subconscious brain vaguely caught some words, so he repeats them back without thinking. "Powder the... Boomslang?"

"No," Draco says, annoyed. "The Boomslang is supposed to be _shredded_. I was on Bicorn Horn, which is what you're actually supposed to powder. Keep up, Potter!"

Harry tries to. He really does. But Draco's so warm and heavy against him. He can't think much right now beyond the heat of his back all over his torso, and if he leans his head closer, he can brush his lips against the skin of his neck. His arms are wrapped around the bottom of his ribcage, rising and falling with every breath. He can see his profile, his grey eyes sharp with intelligence and flickering with fast thoughts, his mouth moving and his hands gesturing, the way he pauses to recall, his brows furrowed and his lips curled in thought, and his chest hurts, looking at him, the beating of his heart slow and erratic in his throat. If he leans his head closer, and tilts Draco's head a little towards him, he can kiss him.

"You're distracted," Draco points out, fixating him with a flat stare.

Harry contemplates lying for a second, but only a second. "Kind of."

Draco's lips thin together. "By what?"

"You. Just... you feel nice," Harry mumbles, his lips buried into the soft material covering his shoulder. "And maybe I'm sort of thinking about kissing you."

"Well, then hurry up and kiss me already," Draco demands. "so you can stop being so bloody distracted."

Harry smiles, and he leans close and kisses him on the mouth hard enough to bob Draco's head back, both of them well-aware that it will only serve to distract them even more.

…

The sun is golden as the skies begins to set into nightfall, swathing the whole of the world in golden as well. Harry glances at Draco, the haze of evening lights catching in the grey of his eyes, thinks about kissing him, or asking Draco to kiss him. So he does.

So he pulls at Draco's hand and draws him close, nose pressed up against his, and he murmurs against his lips, "Kiss me."

Draco's lips quirk into a mellow smile. He takes Harry's face in his hands, closes his eyes and does just that.

  
  


**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed the fic!!  
> You can find me on tumblr at [@alxmeg](https://alxmeg.tumblr.com/)


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